


Haters to the Left: a meta on BBC Sherlock's titular character

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asperger's Syndrome, Bullying, Childhood, Meta, Trauma, defence mechanisms, social ostracism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief analysis of the character of Sherlock, involving Asperger's Syndrome and the effects of long-term social ostracism and alienation beginning in childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haters to the Left: a meta on BBC Sherlock's titular character

If you watch the BBC show _Sherlock_ , you probably know that Sherlock Holmes, as portrayed in the show, is a pretty odd guy, and difficult to like. Pretty much everyone either hates him, or wonders why they don’t hate him considering that he’s weird and such a berk. 

One theory that has gained a lot of credence among fans, and instigated a lot of debate, is that Sherlock has a condition called Asperger’s Syndrome. (There is a lot of good information on this condition out there online, so I’m not going into it. You can check it out for yourself, although if you’re really curious, Tony Attwood’s 1998 book _Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals_ is an excellent, comprehensive guide.)

This theory has even been mentioned on the show itself, during the second series episode _Hounds of the Baskerville_ , when John suggests it as a possible explanation for Sherlock’s behaviour to Lestrade.

I personally agree with the ‘Sherlock has Aspergers’ theory. This quote (unattributed, as it’s from someone’s personal post online) gives a pretty good explanation of why Sherlock fits the diagnosis:

_“Right from the beginning of the show Sherlock has struck me as fitting the Asperger's Syndrome diagnosis perfectly: his personality type - obsessed and obsessive, mostly oblivious to and impatient with societal norms and expectations of behaviour, poor interpersonal skills in general, very bright, relies on logic and is frustrated when things and people don't conform to this logic (even if he himself is not always logical), out-of-touch with his own feelings and everyone else's, etc - and behaviours, when taken together, all match the people with AS I've known. And that whole manic, desperate, agitated storming around/ranting/yelling that the rules of Cluedo are wrong  at the beginning of Hounds of the Baskerville is a perfect example of someone with AS right on the edge of melt-down, in my experience. The weird sleeping patterns also fit. (Please note that these traits are not, necessarily, applicable to all people with Asperger's. Just that I have seen some of these traits in some people, and for that matter, all of these traits in some people. How it presents varies from person to person, as with any condition, but there are some traits that are more common.)”_

However, Sherlock doesn’t just exhibit behaviours that (it can be argued) indicate Asperger’s Syndrome: he is also callous, and sometimes cruel (he doesn’t care about other people’s feelings), tells people they’re stupid and uses his genius-level intellect to belittle others (sometimes even when they’re people he likes), etc. I would like to propose that while these behaviours might not be directly caused by Asperger’s Syndrome itself, these behaviours _are_ the result of years of bullying and social ostracism (from childhood onwards) in response to the fact that Sherlock had Asperger’s Syndrome.

Case study time!

A number of years ago, I knew a girl who, for the purposes of this article, we will call Dee. Dee was twelve years old, and had Asperger’s Syndrome. Teachers liked Dee, who was bookish, friendly towards adults (who were far more tolerant and accepting than her peer group) and genuinely meant well.

Her peers, however, were another matter. Dee had no understanding of social rules and boundaries, which resulted in her offending and/or upsetting everyone she knew at some point. She also possessed a number of strange behaviours. As a result, the other kids were sometimes weirded out by Dee, and she was disliked by them because of her lack of basic social graces.

For most of her time in primary school, Dee was relentlessly bullied and ostracised by the other children in her class: physically, verbally, and emotionally. Dee was physically assaulted, mocked and belittled, had her belongings destroyed, was subject to emotional manipulation, targeted for cruel pranks (by the age of eleven or twelve, she was also singled out for sexual harassment by the boys in her class), and more.

By the time she reached twelve years old, Dee had spent most of her like being hated and/or tormented by the majority of the kids she knew, with no idea how her actions had caused their dislike, and even less idea of how to fix the situation. It was at this point that she apparently came to the realisation that people hated her, she didn’t know why, and without knowing why then there was fuck-all she could do about it.

In light of this realisation, unable to change her relationships with the other kids, she adopted a ‘fuck the haters’ attitude. If you had to sum up the attitude she projected towards the other children’s opinion of her, it was pretty much ‘I don’t give a shit.’ She said and did what she wanted to, without worrying how other people felt or thought about it.

After all, if she couldn’t change her situation, why not? She was _done_ struggling to fit in.

While Dee wasn’t a genius, like Sherlock, she had always been a gifted and intellectually precocious child. For the first time, this became a point of superiority she could lord over her classmates. She behaved as though the company of others was something she disdained on the grounds that they were too stupid, rather than something they denied her. If someone said or did something she considered stupid, she was there, ready to point it out from her newly-weaponised position as class know-it-all (a position that had always been something she had been mocked for, in the past). 

This position became a position of power: whatever anyone else said about her personality, fashion sense, behaviour, or understanding of others, when it came to being ‘smart’ her ground was unassailable. Because of this, she was able to use it to punish others for their ‘stupidity,’ hitting back after years of degradation and powerlessness.

Sometimes she used it against relative innocents, people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than the classmates she was at war with: if someone did or said something that irritated her, she’d deliver a cutting, succinct comment, whether the person deserved it or not. Why? Because she could, and because she didn’t care anymore about being fair.

Basically, her new attitude was, ‘fuck the haters, fuck the conformists, fuck _everybody_.’

At the same time, however, Dee was clearly miserable at the complete breakdown of her interpersonal relationships. She showed signs of being in a deep depression, and it wasn’t uncommon to find her in a relatively-hidden corner, crying silently.

God knows how this situation would have continued, particularly considering the recent introduction of sexual harassment by her male classmates, but fortunately, there was a light at the end of Dee’s tunnel. The next year, she moved to the local high school, where she was given a clean state. It was a much larger school, and most of the students didn’t know Dee at all – for the first time in years, Dee was no longer dealing with hostility on all sides. She had the opportunity to acquire positive social skills she had never learnt due to the degree of ostracism she had experienced, and to make friends. A year later, and Dee was a different girl.

So, how does this relate to Sherlock?

Whenever I watch _Sherlock_ , I sometimes find myself thinking of Dee. In a lot of ways, Sherlock reminds me of a brighter, older Dee; but a Dee who never got that second chance.

Sherlock was no doubt a brilliant, strange child – probably even stranger and offensive than he is as an adult – and no doubt went through similarly scarring experiences to Dee's (if Sherlock went to boarding school, they were probably even worse – see [this meta](http://archiveofourown.org/works/394267)). When I watch the TV show, I see someone who developed the same ‘fuck the haters’ and ‘attack first’ defence mechanisms… but critically, unlike Dee, Sherlock was never in a place where he felt able to de-activate those defence mechanisms. They have been active for so long that they are genuinely part of him. And when he says that people are stupid and he doesn’t want to be friends with them, he’s been telling himself this for so long that he has genuinely come to believe it. 

Oh, and his ‘I don’t have feelings/feelings are stupid’ schtick? Yeah, Dee had that too. For her, feelings were a weakness, because they meant she could be hurt. Feelings made her _vulnerable_. They were something, she had learned through experience, that other people would exploit and use against you. And if other people hadn’t worked that out yet, well, they deserved what happened to you when you were stupid enough to have feelings other people could hurt and exploit. Dee did lose this attitude after a while, after becoming accepted by her classmates in high school and making friends, but doesn't it sound familiar?

My belief is that Sherlock adopted all of these defensive attitudes as a child, and they’ve only grown more sophisticated and more deeply internalised with time, to the point where I do not believe he could ever be capable of unlearning them, even in the most positive circumstances.

Which brings us, of course, to Dr John Watson.

John is different from everyone else in the show in that his initial, unalloyed reaction to Sherlock is one of wonder and fascination, instead of the usual dislike, rejection, or disturbed reaction. This response only deepens as the show goes on. While he might dislike or be exasperated by certain elements of Sherlock’s behaviour, John admires, respects, and _likes_ Sherlock. 

Even Lestrade, who respects Sherlock’s abilities and cares about him, thinks he’s a bit of a tosser. But right from the beginning, John, in contrast to everyone else, offers this unconditional interest in who Sherlock is as a person, without the usual censure of Sherlock’s essential nature.

Now, if Sherlock were really as indifferent, and as hatin’ on the intellectual plebs as he says he is, John’s feelings and attitude to him wouldn’t matter. Instead, Sherlock kind of blooms under the positive interactions he had with John, and eventually becomes deeply attached to him – attached to what we’re led to believe is an unprecedented degree, in fact. Clearly, just like anyone else, Sherlock craves affection, positive attention and companionship: under the right conditions, it only takes him three months (the amount of time between first meeting John, and the episode _The Great Game_ ) to develop a strong and sincere attachment.

This, therefore, I propose as evidence that Sherlock doesn’t _lack_ emotion, as his façade suggests: he merely suppresses or denies it. Nor is he as immune to other people’s emotional reaction to (and opinion of) him as he likes to act. 

Instead, much of Sherlock’s behaviour is a set of deeply-ingrained, possibly even (by this point) mostly-subconscious defence mechanisms designed to protect him from the hostility of others and the possibility of being hurt.

I’m going to end this there, since I’ve basically covered all the points I wanted to, although I could probably go on in more detail (the evidence for Sherlock having Asperger’s Syndrome alone warrants an entire meta, but that wasn’t what I wanted to write today).

**Author's Note:**

> _Feel free to comment or make your own opinions known in the comments section._


End file.
